Day 557

The other day Trump announced that the U.S. economy had over 4.0 percent growth for the last quarter. You can imagine his other comments around this. It was fabulous, best ever, only the start of spectacular things, blah blah blah.

I found this particularly amusing as my portfolio had the biggest one day decline since he took office (and another big decline today.) So was the president lying in his statement? Of course he was! He always lies.

And by the way Obama had over four percent growth in four different quarters of his presidency. Trump also said he inherited an economic mess – not true! Obama inherited an economy in the toilet from W’s terrible economic decisions and devastating tax cuts and huge spending. Of course, Trump put W’s econ prescriptions to shame by inflicting the biggest deficit in our history with no way to pay for it.

Today the president boasted about the great number of jobs he has created. Of course Obama created more jobs for the same period of time.

Wages. Trump says they’re going up. The graphs show otherwise. Since he took office wages have been going down steadily.

So what boosted the economy in this past quarter? The tariffs. (See they’re working!) Oh wait, what? Certain companies stocked up on U.S. products and raw materials fearing the trade war would get worse and they wanted to have the stuff on hand so they wouldn’t have to pay more later. Sorry, but that ain’t happening in the next quarter.

In fact what is fueling any growth in the economy has been the policies that Obama laid down, and they have continued into the Trump presidency. However, if you look at the charts, since Trump has been in office all those factors have slowed, and begun a downward trend. Days before this most recent decline (and Trump;s announcing his great economic success) one economic pundit I was reading had been saying that yes the rally had been going on for quite some time, but it wasn’t really outside the norm for rallies, and that this rally, in his opinion, would continue for some time even though there are signals that it could end. This person argued that even with those signals the rally would continue for another year and that in previous years before the end of a rally huge gains would happen. What to do? His suggestion was invest in the stocks that got us here. The so called FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google). What led the decline the other day? The FANG stocks.

In other economic news Mic Mulvaney, head of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) who has savaged the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now says – Huh, they were right all along. In fact they were better at the numbers than we were, and we were not as optomistic.

Imagine that? A Trump economic person not being as good on these things as people who do this for a living?

When you look at what Trump has done in any area that has become involved it’s a repeatable pattern. He attacks some imaginary foe or wrong. Then based on this ill founded belief he comes up with some pronouncement. There is no plan. Then after having put his subordinates in a bind, he makes up stuff to support his ill informed decisions.

This is a man who is uneducated, ill informed and likes it that way. His policies and ideas are therefore based on fantasies and myths. It can only get worse.

In other news:

The Mueller probe continues. Some in the house are trying to impeach the Asst. AG. And Don Jr. and Robert Mueller were spotted Friday at the airport, waiting at the same gate. To get to that gate you have to take a bus. Did they take the same bus?